Cork dev building a game about being a racing driver. The whole career, karting at 8 to wherever it ends. Would love a sanity check!

Solo dev in Cork. For the last few months I've been building the game I always wanted to play: one driver's entire life. You start at eight in a club kart, your dad has a toolbox, and how far you get depends on the roll you got, the choices you make and a bit of luck you can at least see coming.

It's a career sim, not a driving game. Think Football Manager but you're the driver. Races play out as live text and stop to ask you things. Rain due in three laps, box for inters now or go one more lap? You plan your weeks (school or the test day, family or the sponsor thing), money is real (karting nearly bankrupts families in the game because it nearly bankrupts them in real life) and the game remembers everything. There's a career wall with your defining moments on it and by the end it reads like a life.

Timely enough given the year Alex Dunne is having. A Kildare lad coming up through karting to the edge of the big time is exactly the kind of story this game is built around. Including the brutal odds part. In the sim most careers never reach the top tier, because that's the sport. But GT, endurance, touring cars are all proper careers in it with their own titles, not consolation prizes. Some of the best runs I've had in testing never got near the summit at all.

No public build yet. Plan is karting years free in the browser, full game on Steam after. Before I get there I want to know from other gamers:

Does "you probably won't make F1 and that's the point" appeal to you or put you off? I've had both answers and I want the honest one.

What's the most racing career story the game should be able to produce?

Anyone here follow the junior ladder? What would a game need to get right about it?

Happy to answer anything. I'll post here first when there's something playable.